Yet the public stance of unburdening his specifically-chemical stockpiles has bought Assad time, time only too happily eaten up by UN bodies who have only just got around to staging their much-touted second round of peace talks.

A trilogy-closer which threatens to invite just as much disappointment as The Godfather conclusion.

Mother Russia has dug her heels in (Picture: AP)

All of which is to suggest that the intractable problems the West faces in Syria are hardly simply transposed to Ukraine, notwithstanding that Mother Russia has dug her heels in on both.

Some Conservative ministers have even been briefing that Ed Miliband’s concerns over British-backed military strikes on Syria last summer have helped embolden Putin in Crimea – as if he hardly had any Soviet-style ambitions beforehand.

For the moment, Putin and Russia look in the aggressive and alarming ascendancy, as they did when stalling not only Syria intervention but aid-related sanctions.

Yet as recently as a week ago this alleged string-puller seemed taken aback by the pace of the Ukrainian demonstrators’ uprising and the flight of his protégé Viktor Yanukovych, who has since been reduced to Black Knight-style pleas of defiance.

Meanwhile, Assad of course must be looking on with some delight at being yesterday’s news.

Yet, even for the UN as for us, he has been (un/)safely so for ages already.

Metro Blogs is a place for opinions. These opinions belong to the author and are not necessarily shared by Metro.